Meet Seattle PD Capt. Donnie Lowe. Last week, Capt. Lowe was arrested on domestic violence charges.
He also has a prior DWI, a prior investigation for using excessive
force against his own son in a jail cell, and improperly entering a
private home. None of those prior incidents were enough to remove him
from the force. In fact, back in 2009,
just a couple months after his DWI, and well after the other incidents,
then-lieutenant Lowe was assigned to head up a special Seattle PD
security detail for President Obama’s inauguration. He has since been
promoted.

Through 2011, the Defense Department bought and fielded more than 27,000
MRAPs, according to the Government Accountability Office, which on
March 31 sent Congress a briefing on how the Army and Marines are trying
to determine what equipment designed specifically for fighting in Iraq
and Afghanistan should be retained and what should be discarded.

How to handle nonstandard equipment is an issue bigger than MRAPs, however.

For
example, as part of its post-Iraq-Afghanistan transition work, the Army
since 2004 has reviewed 409 equipment systems, according to the GAO. Of
those, only 11 percent have been determined useful for the future,
including MRAPs. Thirty-seven percent of the systems under review have
been deemed “not needed and should be terminated,” according to the GAO.
The remaining 52 percent, on which the Army has made no decision, are
nonstandard equipment being used in Afghanistan and other overseas
operations and paid for with OCO money.